I have been called stupid more times than I can even count.
I have a bachelor’s and master’s degree, and I am 60 minutes short of a post-graduate degree. Still, I have been called stupid by individuals with just a bachelor’s degree and others with Ph.D.’s, and even by some with no degree at all.
Usually, it is because of my political opinions or my identity as a follower of Jesus. For those antagonistic to my personal views and who know my story, my stupidity is simply evidenced by those final 60 minutes of my postgraduate program (Note, even though my supervisors said my thesis was ready to go, it was rejected by my examiners. This served as the inspiration for my book “Losers Like Us.)
Because of those disastrous 60 minutes in England, I have been hesitant to engage in anything controversial because of that one measly hour. In the back of my mind, I brace myself for that particular insult.
However, even when nothing is said, the dread of those 60 minutes has haunted me since 2008—17 years ago.
Still, sometime during those years, society has changed in ways that helped me better appreciate and be thankful that it worked out that way.
Something has evolved in our society in the last five years or so that has actually broadened my perception. I was hoping to teach at a university years ago. I wanted to be the “expert” in my field whatever that was. I wanted my ideas to be in demand.
But that is not all it’s cracked up to be. Since COVID, the idea of expertise has had its mask ripped off its face. As much as they don’t want to admit it, experts are realizing that we think they’re just as stupid as we are. Sure, they have more letters after their name and can throw around big words when diminutive words would do. But the one thing missing in most ivory towers is common sense.
The last movie the late great Gene Hackman was in was a little-known comedy called “Welcome to Mooseport.” Hackman played a retired U.S. president who settles in the small town to build his presidential library and enjoy the pleasures of retirement. However, the town needed a mayor and approached him to run for the office.
After all, who wouldn’t want a former president as mayor of the town?
After he agreed to run, a dude who ran the local hardware store, played by Ray Romano, threw his hat into the ring.
On one side there is the former president, an expert in his field of running the United States, overshooting the runway on every issue, promising to organize a blue-ribbon panel to study the issue of a high number of car accidents at a particular intersection. On the other hand, there is a local yokel suggesting a tree should be pruned back a little so traffic could better see the stop sign.
Thus, the current state of the “expert.”
In March 2021, after the COVID lockdown, the magazine The Atlantic published a piece called “Following your gut isn’t the right way to go.”
It was the subtitle that got my attention: “The experts had a rough year. We still have to trust them. “
The experts haven’t done anything to redeem themselves. This week, I saw a video of a congressional hearing in which a Senator asked an expert if men could get pregnant. The expert, a “medical doctor” promptly replied yes. When the Senator challenged her on this, she responded with “I am the expert here.”
Now, I realize that I only got a C in high school Health class, but I can totally understand from that is that experts have a ways to go before I or anyone else take any advice from them.
Although I know it won’t happen, we should probably retire the idea that someone is stupid because we don’t agree with them politically, metaphysically, or theologically.
Like every other term that is overused, “stupid” no longer has the same impact it’s had since, I don’t know, the third grade.
Nowadays, if someone calls me stupid, whether it’s in the media, on a social media post, or to my face, I just ignore them. It’s far easier to do once you realize that personal insults thrown your way are simply evidence the “other side” has no response to your argument.
Still, the truth is I am stupid.
I’ll own it.
We all are.
Even the ones who lack the self-awareness to admit it.
But this is where it gets good.
When my postgraduate studies went up in flames, I locked on to 1 Corinthians 1:27-29. It has been my life verse for well over a decade:
“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.”
If you’re a Christ-follower and someone calls you stupid—as they will—own it.
God has this extraordinary methodology through history to use us losers—stupid people by the world’s eyes—to do great things.
Without Jesus, one’s stupidity will do nothing more than just be stupidity.
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